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Building within Nature

A Guide for Home Owners, Contractors, and Architects

2006

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Authors:

Andy Wasowski and Sally WasowskiForeword by Darrel G. Morrison

Opens up a world of natural options to the mowing, watering, and weeding of a traditional lawn

Andy and Sally Wasowski introduce new and exciting techniques for preserving the natural land on which we build new homes, offices, or even shopping centers. The Wasowskis illustrate these concepts in construction through profiles of sites in California, Arizona, South Carolina, Minnesota, and other locations. Building within Nature offers a blueprint for creating communities where both wildlife and human life thrive.

It’s a layman’s introduction to techniques of building custom homes on rural sites with minimal disruption to the existing landscape. In their book, the Wasowskis tout the benefits of what they call natural landscaping, including less maintenance, cost savings on chemical inputs and reduced water use.

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Landscape Management

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Every year, many thousands of acres of woodlands, deserts, meadowlands, and coastal scrub are turned into home or commercial sites. Ironically, by the time these structures are complete, bulldozers have scraped the land clean of its natural vegetation and character, the very features that attracted buyers in the first place. In Building within Nature, Andy and Sally Wasowski introduce new and exciting techniques for preserving the natural land on which we build new homes, offices, or even shopping centers.

Building within Nature stresses that the unnatural landscapes so common in America literally exist on artificial life support. A natural landscape, on the other hand, is filled with native flora and can exist on rainfall alone. A structure built within nature looks as if it has been gently set down into a mature and established landscape—the easiest kind of landscape to maintain. The Wasowskis illustrate this new concept in construction through profiles of sites in California, Arizona, South Carolina, Minnesota, and other locations in North America. They also highlight useful techniques for revegetation, discuss the importance of soils, and argue for the preservation and maintenance of natural habitats.

Building within Nature offers a practical blueprint for creating communities where both wildlife and human life thrive in a harmonious relationship.

$24.95 paper ISBN 978-0-8166-4902-0
178 pages, 8 X 10, 2006

Darrel G. Morrison, FASLA, is one of the nation’s most respected native plant landscape architects.

Andy and Sally Wasowski are the authors of nine books about gardening and landscaping with native plants, including Gardening with Prairie Plants: How to Create Beautiful Native Landscapes (Minnesota, 2002). Their work has appeared in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens handbooks, Country America, National Gardening, Sierra, Audubon, American Gardener, and Fine Gardening.

It’s a layman’s introduction to techniques of building custom homes on rural sites with minimal disruption to the existing landscape. In their book, the Wasowskis tout the benefits of what they call natural landscaping, including less maintenance, cost savings on chemical inputs and reduced water use.

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Landscape Management

Building within Nature does more than explain the concept of building new homes and businesses while preserving native landscapes, it provides real-life examples of architects, designers and builders who are making it work.

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Landscape Design/Build

From America’s coastlines to the high country of its deserts, the Wasowskis offer examples of work turned out by developers and builders who have a feel for this stuff and show what can be done with some careful job management. They also provide a trek across the history of weed whacking and turf building and the effect those practices are having on local environments.

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Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Andy and Sally Wasowski's idea of the perfect yard has nothing to do with groomed lawns and sculpted hedges. The Wasowskis are advocates of preserving natural lands. Such preservation, they maintain, is as good for us as it is for the environment: It puts us in closer contact with nature and greatly reduces the work and expense required to maintain a typical yard.

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Akron Beacon Journal

For offering workable alternatives in nontechnical terms to ecologically minded home owners, contractors, and architects, the Wasowskis’s book is highly recommended.

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Library Journal

The Wasowskis argue that many Americans do not even realize that they have separated themselves from nature. The book helps them find their way back via their home.

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Utne

This book tries to introduce new and exciting techniques for preserving the natural land on which new homes, offices, and even shopping centers are built.

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Apade

Andy and Sally Wasowski provide a practical guide for people who want a low-maintenance, beautiful, and earth-friendly landscape.

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The Compendium Newsletter

It’s all about preserving trees, controlling water runoff and erosion, designing for energy efficiency and using common sense in site planning—a book every architect, developer, landscape designer, landscape architect and watershaper should have near his or her drafting table.